When I read David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day, I laughed until I cried on multiple occasions. Listening to this segment from This American Life is even better: still funny, but also profound. Ultimately he gives a good answer to the question of why we take the risk of entering a foreign culture: the slight strangeness of everything and the need for heightened observation are exciting (albeit occasionally defeating). It is probably preferable to experience gaffes in foreign countries as adventures rather than as humiliations--unless one is David Sedaris and can make such fantastic material out of the humiliations.
Also, frankly, I love the way he transliterates his hardware-store French. "And now I have come to find a table that might work with my iron."
Him Talk Pretty Three Days
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